Monday, May 4, 2009

Alternate Workouts

Still no running. I see the chiropractor and the physical therapist tomorrow and I'll see how everything feels after that. Right this minute, I feel like the trip to the chiropractor improved things on Friday, but everything has been static since then.

On Saturday, I started the day by icing the hamstring. Later, I went to the gym and spent 15 minutes on a spinning cycle, and then did some upper body lifting.

Yesterday, I iced in the morning, rode a Lifecycle for 30 minutes later on, and then spent some time in a hot tub. So, I'm moving again, but I feel like I'm not getting any closer to running. Hopefully, the appointments tomorrow will help in that area.

The highlight of my weekend was my daughter and her new bicycle. A bike shop in Montpelier does an annual bike swap and it was this past Saturday. On Friday night, I took 3 bikes to the shop to sell in the swap. One of them didn't even make it to the swap because a lady offered me cash for it before I had it in the store. The other two bikes sold on Saturday morning.

But, we weren't just selling bikes. My daughter had outgrown her old bike and she had recently ridden a friend's bike without training wheels. She really wanted her own bike, so she and I went back to the swap on Saturday morning as customers. The crowds were outrageous; I was truly shocked by the number of people there. I heard someone say that 300 bikes had sold in the first 10 minutes of the swap.

One of the first bikes we saw was one that my daughter loved, but it seemed pretty expensive for a used bike. It looked as if it had been barely used, but the price just seemed too high. So, we looked around the swap and didn't find anything else that seemed appropriate. We went inside the shop for a bit to look at new bikes and I saw a new version of the bike that my daughter had liked. When I saw what the bike sold for new, the used price outside suddenly seemed like a bargain. So, we went outside and grabbed that bike for her. Then, we waited in line forever, it seemed, to pay for the bike. Then, we went back inside to buy a new helmet for her.

She spent the rest of the weekend on her bike and she's really pretty good. Her older brother broke his arm the day we took the training wheels off his bike when he was 6 or so. He hasn't ridden a bike since. (One of the bikes we sold on Saturday was the bike he was riding when he broke his arm.) So, neither of the kids has ever been very interested in bike riding, but my daughter suddenly seems to love it. I think I'm going to go out for a ride with her tonight, using my mountain bike on our dirt road.

2 comments:

Damon, Neither of my kids were ever very interested in the running and hiking I do, so I was really happy when my son (now age 22) got into mountain biking when he was about 7 or 8 years old. We spent a lot of time together on the trails. These were slow easy rides with a lot of stops to look at things and talk. Great memories for both of us.

Also, I wanted to tell you that I successfully ran and completed Western States in 2007 without running a step for two months leading up to the race due to ankle and foot injuries. I ran about 50 yards the day before the race to see if I could, then ran/walked the race with a decent finish time. Hope that gives you some hope.